Happiness review

 Number 477 on the top 1000 films of all time is the black-comedy Happiness.

Trisha (Cynthia Stevenson) Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle) and teacher Joy (Jane Adams) are three sisters looking for happiness in one way or another. Trisha's husband Lenny (Ben Gazzara) is hiding a dark secret while Helen attracts the voyeuristic peeping Tom, Allan (Philip Seymour Hoffman.) Lastly, Joy becomes attracted to her Russian student Ivan (Jared Harris.)

My last review centred on Roman Polanski's Repulsion. Repulsion would be a better title for this film than Happiness, as it was repulsive. However, I think I was in the minority in this opinion. IMDB labelled it as misunderstood while critics said that it gave even the most depraved of characters a strong level of humanity.

Granted I may have misunderstood this film, but do I really want to understand a film with such a  depraved cohort of characters. Most notably, you have Lenny who is secretly a paedophile. He goes so far as to rape the friends of his eleven-year-old son. Director Todd Solondz played a dangerous game in having a paedophile in such a major, non-villainous role. Did he remind us that even the worse people are still human or did he run the risk of romanticising or at least humanising this awful behaviour?

Another example would be the voyeuristic peeping Tom, Alan, - Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his worse roles. Granted, Alan isn't a nonce, but he's still just as depraved considering how he jerks off while talking to Joy on the phone. Again this wasn't a character I was interested in understanding. Considering he was played by the formidable PSH, this was saying something major.

I also take issue with how this film was labelled as a black comedy. It was definitely black, but it wasn't very funny as it relied on gross-out humour like PSH spunking on the wall and using said spunk to glue a postcard onto the wall. Gross. Not something I wanted to see or laugh at. Not that I laughed much at all. I don't think I even chuckled until the forty-five minute mark.

True you could argue that Solondz' key message was that no matter how hard you try, you can never fill that void inside of you with sexual gratification. Unfortunately, this key message was lost in the gross humour and disgusting characters.